Thunderbird Dependencies

Required

Recommended

Note

If you don't install recommended dependencies, then internal
copies of those packages will be used. They might be tested to
work, but they can be out of date or contain security holes.

Note

You must have installed OpenSSL
before Python 2, or the build
system will quickly fail with output including "ImportError:
cannot import name HTTPSHandler". If you are in any doubt about
this (e.g. upgrading from an older version of SeaMonkey), check
if /usr/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload/_ssl.so exists.
If it does not, reinstall Python-2.7.10
(after installing OpenSSL-1.0.2c. The latest version of
any currently maintained
version of OpenSSL should be satisfactory if already installed.

Installation of Thunderbird

The configuration of Thunderbird
is accomplished by creating a mozconfig file containing the desired
configuration options. A default mozconfig is created below. To see the entire
list of available configuration options (and a brief description of
each), issue mozilla/configure
--help. Create the file with the following command:

cat > mozconfig << "EOF"
# If you have a multicore machine, the build may be faster if using parallel
# jobs. The build system automatically adds -jN to the "make" flags, where N
# is the number of CPU cores. The option below is therefore useless, unless
# you want to use a smaller number of jobs:
#mk_add_options MOZ_MAKE_FLAGS="-j1"
# If you have installed DBus-Glib comment out this line:
ac_add_options --disable-dbus
# If you have installed wireless-tools comment out this line:
ac_add_options --disable-necko-wifi
# If you have installed libnotify comment out this line:
ac_add_options --disable-libnotify
# Comment out following option if you have PulseAudio installed
ac_add_options --disable-pulseaudio
# GStreamer is necessary for H.264 video playback in HTML5 Video Player.
# To enable it, make sure you also set "media.gstreamer.enabled" to
# "true" in about:config.
# If you have GStreamer 0.10.x installed, comment out this line:
ac_add_options --disable-gstreamer
# or uncomment this line if you have GStreamer 1.x.y installed:
#ac_add_options --enable-gstreamer=1.0
# Uncomment these lines if you have installed optional dependencies:
#ac_add_options --enable-system-hunspell
#ac_add_options --enable-startup-notification
# If you want to compile the Mozilla Calendar, uncomment this line:
#ac_add_options --enable-calendar
# Comment out following options if you have not installed
# recommended dependencies:
ac_add_options --enable-system-sqlite
ac_add_options --with-system-libevent
ac_add_options --with-system-libvpx
ac_add_options --with-system-nspr
ac_add_options --with-system-nss
ac_add_options --with-system-icu
# The BLFS editors recommend not changing anything below this line:
ac_add_options --prefix=/usr
ac_add_options --enable-application=mail
ac_add_options --disable-crashreporter
ac_add_options --disable-installer
ac_add_options --disable-updater
ac_add_options --disable-debug
ac_add_options --disable-tests
ac_add_options --enable-optimize
ac_add_options --enable-strip
ac_add_options --enable-install-strip
ac_add_options --enable-gio
ac_add_options --enable-official-branding
ac_add_options --enable-safe-browsing
ac_add_options --enable-url-classifier
ac_add_options --enable-system-cairo
ac_add_options --enable-system-ffi
ac_add_options --enable-system-pixman
ac_add_options --with-pthreads
ac_add_options --with-system-bz2
ac_add_options --with-system-jpeg
ac_add_options --with-system-png
ac_add_options --with-system-zlib
EOF

First, fix building with system freetype-2.6 or later:

sed -i '/^ftglyph.h/ i ftfntfmt.h' mozilla/config/system-headers

Compile Thunderbird by issuing the
following commands:

make -f client.mk

This package does not come with a test suite.

Install Thunderbird by running the
following commands as the root
user:

Command Explanations

make -f client.mk:
Mozilla products are packaged to allow the use of a configuration
file which can be used to pass the configuration settings to the
configure command.
make uses the
client.mk file to get initial
configuration and setup parameters.

Configuring Thunderbird

If your Window or Desktop Manager does not allow you to configure a
default browser, you can add a configuration parameter to
Thunderbird so that a browser will
start when when you click on an Internet/intranet/local URL. The
procedure to check or modify any of the configuration parameters is
quite simple and the instructions here can be used to view or
modify any of the parameters.

First, open the configuration dialog by opening the
“Edit” drop-down menu.
Choose “Preferences” and
then click on the “Advanced”
icon on the top menu bar. Choose the “General” tab and click on the
“Config Editor” button. This
will display a list of the configuration preferences and
information related to each one. You can use the
“Filter:” bar to enter
search criteria and narrow down the listed items. Changing a
preference can be done using two methods. One, if the preference
has a boolean value (True/False), simply double-click on the
preference to toggle the value and two, for other preferences
simply right-click on the desired line, choose “Modify” from the menu and change the value.
Creating new preference items is accomplished in the same way,
except choose “New” from the
menu and provide the desired data into the fields when prompted.

The configuration preference item you need to check so that
Thunderbird uses a specified
browser is the network.protocol-handler.app.http
which should be set to the path of the desired browser, e.g.
/usr/bin/firefox.

If you use a desktop environment such as GNOME or KDE,
you may want to create a desktop file in order to be able to launch
Thunderbird from the desktop
menus. If you didn't enable Startup
Notification support in your mozconfig then change the
StartupNotify line to false. Run the following commands as the
root user: